9 thoughts on “Teddy Kollek

  1. The public face of Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem. I, for one, will not forget that the area in front of the Kotel was once a vibrant neighborhood.
    On a more contrite note, how do we reconcile the vile deeds performed by a dead man, with the need to show respect?

  2. “The public face of Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem.”
    Thats interesting. I prefer to see Kollek as the man that tore down the wall seperating E and W Jerusalem in the wake of it’s reunification in 1967. I am by no means an expert on Jlem politics but what I have been reading and hearing today on the radio is that Kollek was well repsected by Arab and Jewish yerushalmim not to mention his ability to cool tensions between charedim and chilonim.
    It is exactly our task to give respect those whose actions we disagree with. I don’t have to reconcile what he did in order to respect the fact that he was an important Jewish leader of the moder era.

  3. “how do we reconcile the vile deeds performed by a dead man, with the need to show respect?”
    JewDem…you shut your mouth. Something you didn’t do.

  4. Lest we forget that those who lived in the “vibrant neighborhood” in front of the Kotel used the kotel for storing animals and taking shits.

  5. The Jewish Quarter was also a vibrant neighborhood until the Arabs razed it in 1948. But that was, like, the Zionist’s fault, right? Anyway, we definitely shouldn’t have taken it back. That vile Teddy Kollek, always ruffling feathers…

  6. But it’s not cool to look at things from both angles. It’s only cool to look at things from the palestinians side.
    I guess this is so if you don’t know the modern history of jerusalem(last 100 yrs.)

  7. I’m also definitely not any kind of expert on any kind of politics, much less of a city where I’ve never lived. But from everything I understand, Kollek was one of the better Israeli politicians, who actually talked and listened to his constituents, and who honestly wanted to make Jerusalem a safer, cleaner place for all who lived there. Of course he wasn’t perfect; who is? What politician only makes good decisions? But I don’t see the difficulty in being both honest and respectful about the man’s accomplishments and shortcomings.

  8. Jordanian rule was not good for Jerusalem. How is this a defense of crimes committed by Israel? I think Israel, at one time, could be proud of how the city was made open to believers of all faiths. (this is no longer true of course, as the residents of the West Bank and Gaza have been cut off….)
    The raising of that neighborhood was brutal and aroused negative attention in Israel at the time because of the widespread looting reported in the press. I got to know a family who lived there and had to move to the refugee camp afterwards. I can think of no explanation making his family’s expulsion a moral act.
    Kolleck did have a reputation for being an excellent mayor. My point is that when looked at from the other side, that of Palestinians or poor mizrachim, this reputation is undeserved. Kolleck’s rule saw the emergence of the Black Panthers in the Katamomin, once a neighborhood as evocative of slums, crime and hopelessness as Watts was in the US.
    Kolleck will be missed in particular by the ashkenazi old guard labor party elite. He was a proud scion of that lineage, and well deserves to share in the blame assigned to that cohort for all the ways that Israel lost it’s way….

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